1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a thin film integrated circuit device carrying a thin film integrated circuit that has an element such as a memory and a microprocessor (CPU: Central Processing Unit) and is thin and flexible like paper, and to a non-contact type thin film integrated circuit device including the thin film integrated circuit and an antenna, which is used mainly for a card, a tag, a label, or the like for identifying human beings, animals and plants, commercial products, banknotes, and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in all kinds of industrial worlds such as food industry and manufacturing industry, calls have been heightened for strengthening safety and management systems of commercial products, and therewith, the amount of information on the commercial products are increasing. However, the current information on a commercial product is just information such as a country of manufacture, a manufacturer, or an item number, mainly provided by ten and several figures of a bar cord, and the mount of information is quite small. Further, in the case of using a bar-code, carrying out by hand item by item makes reading of the bar-code require long time. Consequently, instead of the bar-code system, an automatic recognition technique by a non-contact IC type tag utilizing an electromagnetic wave, referred to as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), has been attracting attention.
In addition, in order to ensure safety (for example, a place of origin, or whether infected with an infectious disease or not) of animals and plants, a system is becoming common, in which IC chips are directly implanted into bodies of the animals and plants to obtain and manage information on the animals and plants by an information reading device (reader) outside the bodies.
In addition, the number of cards being carried per person has been recently growing, and above all, a non-contact IC card communicating by utilizing electromagnetic field is becoming common, for example, in forms of electronic money and electronic tickets. Further, in the fact of an increasing number of cases such as heinous crimes and disappearances, an ID (identification) card or the like is becoming common, with which whereabouts of an individual particularly such as an infant, a pupil, an old man, or a tourist can be exactly grasped constantly so that the individual can be recognized to reduce possibility of getting involved in an accident.
Furthermore, in order to prevent duplication or abuse when banknotes, coins, securities, tickets, or the like are forged or stolen, a technique of implanting IC chips into them is becoming common (Non-Patent Document 1).
(Non-Patent Reference 1) Nikkei Electronics (Nikkei Business Publications, Inc.) published on Nov. 18, 2002, pp. 67-76